Who Dares Wins
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1985 Alligator
Status: Full Game, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Steve Evans
Graphics: Steve Evans
Sound: Steve Evans

Created by Steve Evans, famous for classics such as Guardian. This game was a very sly Commando clone, and as soon as Elite (Who owned the rights to converting Commando) heard of W.D.W, they gained an injunction to stop it from being released.

A shame, but as you can see for yourself, Elite were right… and it was a blatant copy of the game.

The full game was sneaked out, and now exists with the same music as the sequel which was released (Featuring changed levels)… And here is the full unreleased game for you to enjoy and spot resemblances to Commando.

The actual game eventually resurfaced as “Who Dares Wins 2”, with different maps more distant from the Commando game.

But the news which made me jump, was when the original first game turned up for auction on Ebay recently, and was sold for over £50. The game was infact briefly released at a computer show in 1985, just before the official release was planned, and before Elite saw it.

So there are likely to be a few originals out there to see. But the guy who won the bid on ebay, kindly allowed us to have a scan of the inlay for you all to see… So click the scans link above and see what was to be.

Glenn Stubbingfield recently found a scan of the advert, just before they changed it to number 2. Another shred of reminants of the first game.

Case closed, and luckily one that you can all play… Hopefully one day we will be seeing the original TAP file too.

A nice little game, which was a bit too cheeky for Elite…

Contributions: Sam, Glenn Stubbingfield, Martyn Carroll

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Steve Wilcox from Elite talks about the WDW saga (extracted from Retro Gamer)...

"Imagine the situation. You've just done a significant deal with Capcom to bring Commando to home computers and then you clap eyes on Alligator Software's Who Dares Wins. It looks the same as Commando, it plays the same; even the layout of levels are similar. Best of all, this uncanny clone was on sale before Commando!

"We felt that if Who Dares Wins came out before we got Commando to market it would certainly take some of the shine off our product," says Steve, smiling about the situation now. "We contacted Alligata and made them aware that we held the rights to the Commando license, and they basically told us to get lost!

We sought a bit of legal advice on what our options were and we were advised to go to the High Court and obtain an injunction to prevent sales of the game. The court found in our favour and granted us something called an Anton Piller Order. We then had to contact the local sheriff, which was a completely bizarre thing to be doing in the 1980s, and tell him that we'd been granted one of these archaic orders which required him to assemble a posse! And over the course of one weekend, the local sheriff and a group of his merry men, armed with this Anton Piller Order, went over to Alligata's offices in Sheffield and literally sealed them off! The Alligata guys turned up for work on Monday morning and found that their entire warehouse full of this Who Dares Wins game had been sequestered.

"But being the canny lot that they were, Alligata took a bit of advice itself and discovered that if they changed the product, then the specific order we'd got would no longer apply. So in fairly short order they popped up with a game called Who Dares Wins II, which as far as I recall didn't differ a whole lot from Who Dares Wins except that the commando in the game had a blue beret as opposed to a green one. But it bought us a few weeks and Commando successfully made it to market before Who Dares Wins II."

Steve Wilcox.

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/who-dares-wins/

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Eight invaded areas must be brought back under your control in this Commando-style shoot 'em up, which progresses vertically using a flick-screen system. You are armed with a rifle (activated by a short tap of the fire button) and five grenades (used via a longer press), and must not only kill off the enemy forces, but also rescue your comrades who are being lead away.

Extra supplies are found as you progress through the game, as are extra lives in addition to your starting 3. Enemies attack from all areas of the screen, making good use of the decoy opportunities of the terrain, and you must do the same to have a chance. The levels include rivers with narrow bridges and potholes.

After level 8 you get a screen congratulating you then it says your backup team did not hold so you have to return to level 1 again.

Trivia

Injunction

Elite, who owned the rights to the conversion of the arcade game Commando, gained an injunction to stop Who Dares Wins from being released as it was too similar the game, but a few copies made it out. The game maps were changed to make the game different from Commando and released as Who Dares Wins II.


http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/who-dares-wins
